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major treatment

Bryan-Chamorro Treaty

...were moved to San José. One of the court’s landmark cases involved the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty of 1916, which gave the United States permission to use the San Juan River (the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica) as part of an interoceanic canal route. Costa Rica protested that Nicaragua was violating preexisting treaty rights and that opening a route would threaten Costa Rican...

Carter

Carter served as a sort of diplomat without portfolio in various conflicts in a number of countries—including Nicaragua (where he successfully promoted the return of the Miskito Indians to their homeland), Panama (where he observed and reported illegal voting procedures), and Ethiopia (where he attempted to mediate a settlement with the Eritrean People’s Liberation Force). He was...

Central American Common Market

...regional economic development through free trade and economic integration. Established by the General Treaty on Central American Economic Integration signed by Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua in December 1960, its membership expanded to include Costa Rica in July 1962. The CACM is headquartered in Guatemala City.

Cold War

Problems in Central America, however, commanded the attention of the United States throughout the 1980s. In Nicaragua the broadly based Sandinista revolutionary movement challenged the oppressive regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, whose family had ruled the country since the 1930s. In accordance with its human rights policies, the Carter administration cut off aid to Somoza, permitting the...

Columbus

...on being refused entry by Ovando did he sail away to the west and south. From July to September 1502 he explored the coast of Jamaica, the southern shore of Cuba, Honduras, and the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua. His feat of Caribbean transnavigation, which took him to Bonacca Island off Cape Honduras on July 30, deserves to be reckoned on a par, as to difficulty, with that of crossing the...

Dollar Diplomacy

Under the name of Dollar Diplomacy, the Taft administration engineered such a policy in Nicaragua. It supported the overthrow of José Santos Zelaya and set up Adolfo Díaz in his place; it established a collector of customs; and it guaranteed loans to the Nicaraguan government. The resentment of the Nicaraguan people, however, eventually resulted in U.S. military intervention as...

Honduras

...power through a bloodless military coup in late 1978, pledged to continue Melgar’s policies, but he soon faced harder times. Central America entered a cycle of violence with the revolution in Nicaragua that overthrew Anastasio Somoza Debayle in July 1979 and the revolution in El Salvador that was under way in that same year. Honduras appeared to be an island of stability as its neighbours...

Hurricane Mitch

hurricane (tropical cyclone) that devastated Central America, particularly Honduras and Nicaragua, in late October 1998. Hurricane Mitch was recognized as the second deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record, after the Great Hurricane of 1780. With millions left homeless and property damage of roughly $6 billion, it was also one of the most destructive.

Latin American independence movements

...nation’s politics for several decades. The provinces of the Kingdom of Guatemala—which included what are today the Mexican state of Chiapas and the nations of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica—had adhered to Iturbide’s Mexico by 1822. With the exception of Chiapas, these Central American provinces split off from Mexico in the wake of Iturbide’s fall. They...

Sandinistas

one of a Nicaraguan group that overthrew President Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979, ending 46 years of dictatorship by the Somoza family. The Sandinistas governed Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990. Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega was reelected as president in 2006, 2011, and 2016.

United States

The U.S. conflict with the Nicaraguan revolutionary regime of Daniel Ortega also reached a climax in 1989. On February 14 five Central American presidents, inspired by the earlier initiatives of the Costa Rican president and Nobel Peace laureate Óscar Arias Sánchez, agreed to plans for a cease-fire in the entire region, the closing of Contra bases in Honduras, and monitored...

In foreign affairs Reagan often took bold action, but the results were usually disappointing. His effort to unseat the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua through aid to the Contras, a rebel force seeking to overthrow the government, was unpopular and unsuccessful. U.S.-Soviet relations were the chilliest they had been since the height of the Cold War. Reagan’s decision to send a battalion...

...the other hand, the United States argued in 1966 that its military assistance to South Vietnam was justified as collective self-defense. The United States also tried to argue, in the case brought by Nicaragua before the International Court of Justice in 1986, that its military and paramilitary activities against that country were in collective self-defense with Costa Rica, El Salvador, and...

Walker’s filibuster

The high point of American filibustering was reached under William Walker, a Californian who first tried to take Mexican Baja (Lower) California and then turned his attention to Nicaragua. In 1855 Walker took advantage of a civil war in Nicaragua to take control of the country and set himself up as dictator. In May 1856 President Franklin Pierce recognized the Walker regime.